{"id":408541,"date":"2026-04-24T12:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/408541\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T12:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:14:15","slug":"the-men-behind-your-favorite-ai-gay-thirst-traps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/408541\/","title":{"rendered":"The Men Behind Your Favorite AI Gay Thirst Traps"},"content":{"rendered":"

With his deep brown eyes, wide grin, and almost comically chiseled body, Jae Young Joon<\/a> is the platonic ideal of a hunky male influencer. On Instagram<\/a>, where he has more than 320,000 followers, he regularly posts himself trying on sheet masks at home, enjoying soju and karaoke with his friends, or posing<\/a> in front of the Ferris wheel at Coachella<\/a>. Occasionally, he\u2019ll promote his music, including his recent LP Pressure Release<\/a>, which features a BDSM-inspired album cover, his back muscles rippling underneath a harness and chains.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an impressive online presence, and Jae\u2019s fans eat it up: his comments are filled with fire and heart-eye emoji and people praising his music. It\u2019s not until you go back to his profile and look at his bio, which says \u201cHuman mind. AI generated,\u201d that you realize Jae isn\u2019t real. His friends aren\u2019t real. His music career isn\u2019t real. Even his trip to Coachella isn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n

Jae is the brainchild of Luc Thierry, a soft-spoken Canadian man in his early thirties who has been growing Jae\u2019s account for the past few months. Even though he discloses that Jae is AI-generated on his profile, he says most of his followers ignore it or choose to pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I see people responding in a way that it is real, I’m hoping that they understand it’s not real and that they’re choosing to role-play or to accept that it’s a fantasy, the same way you\u2019d form a parasocial relationship with a character from a video game or a TV show,\u201d Thierry tells me. \u201cAnd I understand this is not exactly the same, but I feel like my job as the creator behind it is to indulge in that and allow them to feel like they’re part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thierry is part of a cadre of creators making content primarily for a gay male audience\u2014though Thierry says he has been surprised to find that the majority of Jae\u2019s audience is female. The creators are on a group chat together. They regularly like and comment on each other\u2019s posts, frequently collaborating with each other to grow their audiences.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, two of the characters, \u201cSantos Walker\u201d and \u201cCaleb Ellis,\u201d went viral after \u201cappearing\u201d on the red carpet for the premiere of The Devil Wears Prada 2. \u201cI\u2019m gagging. Scrolling through Instagram and I came across a whole group of AI models\/accounts,\u201d the writer and editor Mikelle Street wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Santos and Caleb\u2019s red carpet appearance sparked backlash online, with some assuming that the post was sponcon for 20th Century Studios, the film\u2019s distributor. This wasn\u2019t actually the case; WIRED has confirmed that the creator of the \u201cSantos\u201d account made the image without the studio\u2019s involvement, intending the post to serve as the online equivalent of crashing the red carpet. The creator even crafted an elaborate narrative for the post, imagining a rich movie producer had ushered Santos and Caleb to Hollywood on a private jet. (20th Century Studios did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

Even though the post was not sponcon, it triggered a discussion online about whether AI-generated influencers like Santos and his ilk were deceiving their audiences or setting a dangerous precedent for the future of branded content.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe currently have human influencers,\u201d one person wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cSo, the next step is CREATING fake, 100% controllable influencers FROM SCRATCH for the sole purpose of marketing films, shows, products etc.?\u201d Others mocked Santos\u2019 and Caleb\u2019s followers and those ogling their comically bulky frames, sparking discourse about how AI models propagate unrealistic body standards in the gay community.<\/p>\n